


Operation: Spark Joy

by vatreniworld



Series: Luka Wins Everything [7]
Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Gen, I've lost all my sanity, STILL CRACK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-24 00:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18159020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vatreniworld/pseuds/vatreniworld
Summary: Just an average day with Real Madrid -- puppies, penguins, and pandemonium.





	Operation: Spark Joy

**Author's Note:**

> Musical Inspiration: Николай Басков - Калинка

_Tuesday, 26 February, 2019_

Vini sat on the curb of the sidewalk while the sun pelted him with rays of mid-morning light. Sweat quickly beaded at the nape of his neck and slid down the back of his neck under the collar of his shirt. He switched his phone on and glanced at the screen.  _9:18_.

It was not like Luka or Karim to be late picking up Vini.

He tinkered with the idea of calling one of them if only to check that everything was okay. He dialed Luka’s mobile number. It rang twice before Luka picked up on the other end.

“Vini–!”

The sounds of ABBA blared through the receiver.

Vini yanked the phone away from his ear amid Luka’s shrieks for Karim ease off the gas and Karim’s best attempts to sing “Dancing Queen.”

The sound of tires squealing against the road pierced the air. Just as Vini glanced in the direction of the noise, Karim’s car appeared in his sightline. He scrambled to his feet and away from the curb as Karim screeched to a stop next to the mailbox.

Vini slowly opened the rear passenger door and stuck his head inside the car. “Dancing Queen” was still on full blast. Karim was humming the melody albeit slightly off-key. Luka had his forehead on the dashboard.

“Sorry we’re late,” Karim belted over the music. “Rough morning.”

Vini slid into the rear seat with his backpack in his lap. “Why aren’t you riding with Vanja this morning?” he asked, gently pulling Luka by his shoulder so he sat back against the seat properly.

“She said she had something to take care of,” Luka answered, voice tired. “I can only imagine what that means.”

Without another word, Karim sped off, switching the stereo to “Waterloo.”

By the time the trio arrived at practice, Vini did not want to hear ABBA again for the rest of the year. The original arrangement he made with Luka and Karim of “driver picks the music with Vini alternating every third day” looked bleaker by the day.

He had no time to dwell on this, however, as Vanja strode through the main doors and motioned them inside.

Vanja nodded in the direction of the dressing room. “Team meeting,” she said, as though that were explanation enough.

Karim glanced down at Luka and Vini and pulled his lips into a grimace. “Do you know what she’s talking about?” he asked.

Luka shook his head. “Nope.”

Vini gulped, “I don’t know if I like where this is going.”

“It can’t be worse than when she made us do sit ups for an hour…right?” Karim chuckled nervously and nudged Luka’s shoulder with his elbow. When neither Luka nor Vini offered any words of comfort or rebuttal, Karim repeated, wheezing, “ _Right_?”

When they entered the dressing room, the sight of a slight woman standing with a serene smile on her face was an jarring juxtaposition with the dodgy shifting of the footballers surrounding her.

She was so short she made Luka and Brahim look tall.

“Everyone,” Vanja addressed the room and placed a hand on the smaller woman’s shoulder, “this is Marie Kondo.”

“Hi, Marie,” the players responded as though it were their first day of elementary school.

“She’s here to help you with your motivation.”

Sergio narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Motivation?”

Vanja hummed, “Just listen,” and gave Marie the floor.

“I was told that you have had a difficult season,” Marie said. “I am here to help you find what each of you needs to find to motivate you and to motivate the team.”

Nacho did not look convinced. “How?”

Marie nodded and pointed to the group photo after winning the Champions League last year. “By finding what sparks joy.”

Anticipating the following question of what “spark joy” meant, Marie walked deliberately up to Toni and gestured airily to his chin where his attempt at a beard – a patchwork quilt seemed a more appropriate description – resided. She smiled serenely and asked the room, “Does this spark joy?”

The dressing room was stiflingly quiet for several seconds.

Case blurted, “Nah, man. It’s ridiculous.”

Toni’s jaw dropped, affronted. “I don’t see your beard looking any better!”

“Oi!”

“It  _is_  a bit distracting, Toni,” Luka chimed in as he adjusted his bangs. A chorus of grunts and sighs of agreement followed from the rest of the team.

“Then it’s settled,” Marie said in a bubbly tone. “To spark more joy in the team,  _Kuruusu-san_ ,” she plowed on despite Toni mouthing ‘san’ in confusion, “you’ll need to shave your beard.”

“That’s not a beard, ma’am,” Marco interjected.

Marie shrugged. “Whatever it is: it needs to be gone.”

“How come the one time  _I_  want a beard, you asswipes throw me under the bus, but when Luka wants one and only gets  _peach fuzz_ –!”

Luka huffed indignantly, “Hey!”

“–everyone’s okay with it?!”

The team looked around at each other, visages blank. Finally, Keylor offered, “Lukita is Lukita.” A round of nods followed soon after.

“What kind of explanation is that?!”

“A reasonable one,” Sergio retorted.

“Reasonable my  _ass_!”

Methodically, Marie moved around the room with her interpreter, asking questions about what each player liked to do to prepare for a match. Once she reached Luka, she surveyed him for several moment before her eyes landed on the the headband twisted around his wrist.

Unconsciously, Luka reached for the headband to thread his fingers between the coils.

“Does the headband spark joy?” she prompted.

Luka shrugged. “I guess so…”

“Do you know why it sparks joy?”

He licked his lips. “It helps keep my hair from getting in my face when I play,” he explained. “I don’t like my hair being messed up.”

She considered his words. “Why do you only wear one?”

He blinked. “I only need one.”

“But wouldn’t five headbands spark more joy?” she asked, though to Luka it appeared to be completely rhetorical.

Still, Marie pressed on. “What else sparks joy?” she prompted the room. She took one of Keylor’s extra jerseys in her hands, examining the stitching around the collar.

While most of the players dropped their heads in contemplation, Regui blurted, “Puppies?”

Rapha frowned at him. “What about them?”

Regui pulled his phone out of his cubby and showed Rapha his lockscreen, a scene of puff-ball puppies wrestling in a field of dandelion fluff and daisies. “I like puppies.”

Odri raised his hand. “So do I. Hermes makes me super happy.”

Luka glanced over at Marie. “Does that count as ‘spark joy?’” he asked, wondering just how many headbands he had shoved in a drawer at home.

She smiled and nodded. “Yes,” she said, folding Keylor’s jersey back into a crisp rectangle and handing it to its owner.

Keylor balanced the jersey gently in his palm. He was not entirely sure how a jersey could be balanced – that was a term left for swords and silverware and acrobats – but it was. He placed it on the top shelf of his cubby.

Marie sat delicately on a vacant portion of the bench lining the dressing room. She folded her hands in her lap, continuing, “You can incorporate puppies into your games or after them.”

“I don’t think puppies would be allowed here, ma’am,” Nacho interjected. “FIFA has some pretty strict regs on animals being allowed in the stadiums.”

Sergio cut in flatly, “You really gonna pull the ‘FIFA regs’ card when there have literally been penguins all over the damn field?”

Nacho rolled his eyes. “FIFA Certified Refs trump FIFA Animal Regs.”

“Besides,” Isco hummed, crossing his arms and leaning back against the frame of his locker, “we’ve played against players who were more animals than penguins or dogs and FIFA never gave a damn about them.”

Sergio made a noise of humor in the back of his throat. “I won’t have the Bernabéu be made into a rodeo,” he said firmly.

Nacho snorted, “Have you  _met_  us?”

The dressing room burst into raucous laughter.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door to the dressing room, a single thought passed between a pair of eavesdroppers.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Ema?” Ivano whispered, eyeing his sister with a mischievous twinkle and the faintest hints of a smirk.

Ema deadpanned, “Sadly…yes.” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and began typing, fingers flying across the screen. “Should we get the penguins involved?” she asked, tone half-bored-half-intrigued.

Ivano shrugged. “The more the merrier.”

“How many puppies you think mama’ll let us bring?”

Ivano and Ema stared at each other for several seconds before saying in unison, “None.”

“Better to let this surprise be a surprise,” Ivano sighed.

“Isn’t the phrase ‘better to ask forgiveness than permission?’” Ema retorted.

“Do you care?”

“Not really.”

Ivano stretched to his feet and wiped his hands on his jeans. “I’ll go fill Sofia in on the surprise, then.”

* * *

_Wednesday, 27 February, 2019_

For Marcos, playing for Real Madrid was –

(“How long do you think they’ll keep Lopetegui locked up in the looney bin?” Toni asked as one of the physios massaged out a particularly nasty knot above his sacrum.

Carvajal grunted into the mattress of his massage table. “Does it matter?” he replied dryly, wincing as his physio leaned forward into his calves.

Marcos wiggled his toes in an ice bath, watching on silently.

“Got any opinions about it, captain?” Toni grumbled.

“Do I look like I have a death wish?”

“Luka?”

“Don’t ask.”

“What happened to him, anyway? Lopetegui?” Odri piped, adjusting the warming towel around his neck.

Rapha sighed as he wrapped a warming towel around his neck, “I think it was something about glow-in-the-dark and fire wielding children.”

Luka muttered under his breath, “Close enough,” as though no one heard him.

But Marcos did.)

– special.

He heard stories about the incident at Sevilla – two children under the age of ten tying up the majority of the starting lineup, cardboard cutouts, a mob of rabid women. At first, he thought it was some elaborate prank. After all, it  _was_  Real Madrid and they  _were_  footballers. Exaggeration was only in their nature.

At least, that was what he thought until Luka made that not-so-off-handed comment after a match.

He should have kept this moment in mind when he agreed to help Ema Modrić out right before the second leg of the Copa match against Barça began.

Marcos whispered nervously, “This sounds like a bad idea…,” as he tiptoed through the halls of San Bernabéu stadium behind her.

Ema shrugged. She said plainly, “You worry too much, Marcos.”

Marcos frowned at the back of her head. “Why am I here?”

“To help me.”

“…With what?”

“Reconnaissance gone wrong.”

“How do you even  _know_  that word?”

“I like to read.”

Five minutes of sneaking about later, Ema stepped into what Marcos was certain was Barcelona’s empty dressing room. She made a beeline through the room to a supply closet and examined the door.

“I still don’t know why I’m here,” Marcos sighed.

Ema glanced up at him blankly.

Marcos could not decide if he was more unnerved by the actual look or the fact that it was practically a carbon copy of the same look he had seen Luka throw Kroos’s way at least a dozen times since Marcos arrived at Real Madrid. If Ema were not sixty-some-odd centimeters shorter than Luka, Marcos may not have been able to tell the difference between the two.

“You’re the lookout,” she stated plainly.

Marcos knew he would regret asking, but he felt compelled. “Look-Lookout for what?” he stammered.

“While I pick the lock on this door,” she replied and pulled two hair pins out of her pocket.

“While you pick the  _what_?” Marcos parrotted lamely.

A disembodied voice chimed in, “Well she would be able to answer that, Marcos, if you let her  _pick_  the damn  _lock_.”

Marcos startled, jumping away from the door. “Odri?!” he gasped. He slid to his hands and knees and peered under the door. “What are you doing in there?”

“Dammit, Marcos, go be a lookout like Ema asked you!”

“Can you make it quick, too?” Brahim’s voice added to the conversation. “My foot is starting to fall asleep.”

“Mine’s already asleep,” Mariano groaned from behind the door.

Marcos rolled out of Ema’s way as she positioned her pins into some strange configuration and inserted them in the lock. As instructed, he walked to the corner of the hall and scanned for any passers-by who would rat him and Ema out to the people in charge of his paycheck.

“How did you get stuck in there?” Ema asked through the door, jimmying the lock with the hair pins.

“We were hiding out listening and trying to dig up some info we could use for next game,” Brahim explained, “but they locked us in here before we could sneak out.”

“Did you get anything useful?”

“Not really. Unless complaints about Vini’s speed was what you had in mind…”

Ema scoffed, “Could’ve sent them a postcard with that much.” She twisted one of the pins to the left. A second passed and the  _clang_  of the tumblers disengaging filled the hall. “ _Da_!” Emma hissed under her breath.

Odri, Brahim, and Mariano tumbled out of the storage closet.

“Is this a normal thing for you Modrić children?” Marcos laughed anxiously.

“What thing?” She cocked her head and suddenly Marcos could not tell her apart from her father again.

“People being locked in closets,” he said.

Ema shook her head.

Just when Marcos thought he was in the clear, she added, “It’s only happened twice.”

Marcos stared at Odri, Brahim, and Mariano. “You heard that, too, right?”

Brahim managed a slight nod while Odri and Mariano resolutely shook their heads in perfect unison.

“Thought so.”

“Right,” Ema said as she stowed her lock-picking tools back in the appropriate pocket. “We better get back to the Real side of the building before someone calls sabotage.”

The group of five slunk through the maze of halls of the Bernabeu until they arrived back in neutral territory.

Odri and Marcos leaned back against the closest wall and sagged in relief. “Glad that’s over,” Odri murmured. His eyes darted over to Ema’s figure as she typed on her phone. “I’m never doing anything for you again. Got that?”

“Whatever you say,” Ema replied, gaze never leaving her screen.

“I mean it!” Odri insisted.

Mariano placed a hand on Odri’s shoulder. “No point in arguing with her.”

Ema clicked her tongue. “ _Ivano, gdje si_?” she hissed under her breath.

Brahim crouched down to Ema’s eye level. “Something wrong?”

“Ivano was supposed to be here already for the next phase of ‘Operation: Spark Joy’ but…,” she cleared her throat, “he’s not and he’s not answering my texts.”

“Operation?” Brahim repeated, bemused.

“Spark Joy?” Mariano added.

Marcos spent every last spec of willpower he had ignoring the siren in his head warning him of danger. He really should have paid heed to the rumors about Lopetegui’s untimely demise – or institutionalization, which were synonymous to Real Madrid – and not gotten involved in Ema, but Marcos knew he was in too deep with this child to even consider running now. (He was not even sure he could outrun her if he tried.)

The floor beneath him shook violently. Before any of the five had a chance to ask what was happening, the doors at the end of the hall flew open to reveal a stampede of puppies of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

Odri, Mariano, Brahim, and Marcos flattened themselves against the wall, heads swiveling with each passing wave of countless puppies. None of them dared to utter a word.

That was, until Mariano choked out, “What the fu–?!”

“Ivano!” Ema hollered. “I told you to keep them occupied!”

Ivano skidded his trot to a halt and braced his hands on his knees. “Oh,  _I’m sorry_ ,” he gasped sarcastically, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “I thought that giving them treats would help them fall asleep.”

A few seconds later, Sofia trundled along as fast as her chubby toddler legs could carry her. Her shoes slapped against the floor with loud  _thwacks_  with each step. “Wait, puppies!” she shouted and continued to take chase. If she happened to notice any of the other souls standing in the middle of the hall, she paid them no mind. She had a stampede of puppies to chase after.

Marcos silently watched the toddler disappear at the end of the hallway. He would have thought to blink, but knew somehow, deep down, that it would not change what he just witnessed.

“We better run after them,” Ema said, worrying her lip between her teeth like Marcos saw her father do on many an occasion.

Ivano grunted his agreement.

Marcos frowned. “Why?”

Ivano and Ema croaked simultaneously, “Mama.”

* * *

The sight that met Odri as he emerged from the tunnel with Brahim, Marcos, Mariano, Ema, and Ivano was one that he would never forget. Puppies littered the field both with their bodies and with their…excrement; Barcelona and Real Madrid players alike tried to no end to escape the hoards of puppies threatening to stomp them to death with their sheer numbers; penguins cawed unhappily in flurries of feathers; Luka and Messi stood at the center of the carnage as still as they possibly could.

Odri took small comfort watching Sergio and Pique fight over who should be on the other’s shoulders to escape the threat of puppies and angry penguins.

A cry for help echoed over the cacophony of animal noises and shouts. Odri focused his gaze to the left side of the field.

A mountain of puppies crushed Regui into the ground, licking every available iota of skin exposed.

Odri rushed over to the mountain and tried to gently remove puppies from Regui only to find the gaps fill with more immediately.

“Regui!” Odri hollered, as he extracted two more mutt puppies from where he thought Regui’s head was under the pile of fluffy bodies. “Regui, are you alive?!”

As Odri lifted a third puppy and tucked it under his arm, Regui gulped a lung-full of air. “Save me!” he squawked.

A puppy stomped over the pile and stood on Regui’s neck to lick his nose and showed no signs of stopping for the foreseeable future. When Regui tried to stretch his face away, the puppy only increased its efforts tenfold. To punctuate its annoyance, it nipped the bridge of Regui’s nose, resulting in a startled yip from the defender.

“Marcos!” yelled Odri over to the sidelines where Marcos tried his best, albeit unsuccessfully, to prevent a particularly stubborn puppy from chasing the penguins. “Are you gonna help me or what?!”

Marcos huffed and snapped his head up to glare at Odri. His hair flopped across his face in curtain; its typical immaculate styling lost the battle between children with overactive imaginations and the great stampede of puppies. He barked, “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY?!”

Before Odri could snark in return, a small figure came to Regui’s aid. Sofia took a hold of Regui’s left foot and began to pull him out from under the avalanche of puppies. Slowly, the balls of fur rolled off Regui save for the one whose chompers were still secured on Regui’s nose. Without so much as an “as you do,” Sofia adjusted her grip to Regui’s hands and hefted him to his feet.

Odri held the puppies in his arms and said, “Thanks, uhhh, Sofia.”

The youngest Modrić child beamed up at him for a moment and took off in the other direction to help save Vini and Rapha from a Newfoundland puppy.

Regui sagged his weight against Odri, gasping, “When the captain said that my first Clásico was going to be dramatic, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

Odri watched Sergio jump into the stands as Ema and Ivano approached him with Vanja scorching the earth not far behind them.

“Y’know, Regui, I don’t think he did either.”

* * *

Luka stared at the pandemonium long enough for his eyes to become unfocused.

“So,” Messi broke the silence. He ran a hand through his hair. “Is this going to happen  _every_  Clásico from now on?”

A puppy, too tired from the day’s events, stumbled headfirst into Luka’s cleats and promptly fell asleep.

“I honestly don’t know,” Luka replied, yanking his five headbands out of his hair. “We could test the theory on Saturday.”

At Messi’s lack of response, Luka added, “Or all of us could stay at home.”

The puppy at his feet barked in agreement.

**Author's Note:**

> If there are any mistakes in here, please let me know. Thanks for reading.


End file.
